


Reaching Towards Dawn

by ThisPolarNoise



Category: The Hunt for Red October (1990)
Genre: ALL THE HURT/COMFORT, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Death Fix, Developing Relationship, First Kiss, Fix-It, Gunshot Wounds, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Long recovery, M/M, Major Character Injury, Medical Procedures, Mentioned period-typical homophobia, Recovery, Unconsciousness, canonical character injury, disclaimer: not a doctor, implied period-typical homophobia, like it's not really that relevant but it's sort of... there, looking Tom Clancy's ghost in the eye and giving him the finger, lots of hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27274492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisPolarNoise/pseuds/ThisPolarNoise
Summary: In the aftermath of their escape, Marko Ramius and Vasily Borodin start to build new lives and a new relationship.
Relationships: Marko Ramius & Jack Ryan, Vasily Borodin & Marko Ramius, Vasily Borodin/Marko Ramius
Comments: 27
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First off, big thanks to branwyn for some beta work on the first chapter a while ago (And for encouraging me to post things when I was having a minor breakdown over it yesterday).  
> The chapter count is approximate, I think seven is about the lowest it's gonna be. Bearing in mind I thought this fic was gonna max out at about 4k words and right now it's on 15k, that is by no means set in stone.  
> Title from Rolo Tomassi's Risen.

He spots the man in the entry to the Conn before any of the others by sheer coincidence, just good luck that he turns when he does to push Ramius away. It’s Loginov, that cook who’d been loitering outside the Captain’s quarters when Putin was killed.

The bastard must have emptied his full magazine but misses Ramius with every shot. Only one finds a mark. It doesn't matter really; that one bullet is enough.

Vasily's legs collapse under him. He doesn't know what's happening at first, just that he's suddenly in enough pain to make tears fall from his eyes for the first time in years. He blinks and Ramius is at his side, tearing open his jacket, then all he sees is the red rose of blood blossoming on his white shirt. He blinks slowly, takes a painful breath and looks back up at Ramius.

He's dying. He knows that now, but can't find it in himself to care too much. He can't do anything about it now, and he'd take that bullet again if it meant Ramius didn't have to.

Still… 

"I would like to have seen Montana," he manages to whisper, seeing the shock, the helplessness, the pure  _ devastation  _ in Ramius's eyes. There's the feeling of one of his rough hands cupping the side of Vasily's face and neck, lowering him gently to the thrumming metal of the deck, the other covering the hole in his chest.

There's shouting from somewhere but he doesn't hear what about. Then nothing.

* * *

Ramius immediately moves back to Borodin as soon as they get back to the conn, taking over from one of his officers to press his hands into the wound in his chest. There’s a pool of blood around him now, and Ramius’ concern is obvious, but he doesn’t speak.

He meets Mancuso's eyes and forces a smile of grim satisfaction when Tupolev's missile hits his own sub, but other than that his focus stays solidly on Borodin.

His breathing is even shallower than before, and a stream of blood is making its way from the corner of his lips. Ramius very carefully shifts him onto his side and Borodin starts to cough up blood, but when he stops his breathing is a little easier. Ramius leans down until his head is almost level with Borodin’s ear, whispers gentle reassurances in Russian even though he’s been unconscious since only seconds after the bullet hit him. He’s so quiet, but from what Jack can hear it’s what he might have said in the same situation; telling him to stay strong, stay with him, keep fighting. Even though Ramius is in pain himself, losing blood fast, his first thought is his injured second-in-command.

One of the other officers calls out in accented English, begging for a medic now they’re safe from the rest of their countrymen, at least for the moment. Mancuso’s expression barely changes, but the lines around his mouth soften slightly. He nods in confirmation to Jones, who immediately starts to radio the  _ Dallas  _ and the  _ Reuben James _ to get some medical personnel in the  _ Mystic _ and get the hell back over to them.

They send over support as soon as they can, but it takes long, precious minutes before anyone turns up aboard, minutes where Ramius’s quiet reassurances turn into what sound more like prayers as the men around him pretend not to notice. Jack pulls Ramius away gently as the medics finally enter the conn, not a second too soon. He hears one of them curse under his breath, but they start work quickly.

Ramius straightens, raises a hand to his injured shoulder and hisses like it’s the first time since they got back to the conn that he’s noticing the wound.

“Ryan,” he whispers roughly, reaching for Jack’s arm, and Jack moves to support him again. He squeezes Jack’s arm in thanks, leans into his side.

He leads Jack to the captain’s chair and sits back in it, watching the medics while Mancuso stands, both giving orders where needed, somehow never conflicting or giving the same order twice unless it needs translation. He waves the medics off whenever they get close, choosing to send them back to Borodin and just hold his jacket against his injured shoulder to staunch the blood flow. It’s only when they strap Borodin onto a stretcher and start to carry it back out of the conn that he finally accepts some help.

Jack knows he’s being stubborn, but understands it. If there was any way he could have saved the friends he went out with that day in Cyprus - well, there’s no use dwelling on that any more. He almost didn’t make it himself.

Around him, the Russian officers and the men from the  _ Dallas  _ get back to steering the  _ Red October _ , finding out where they’ll take her to dock, and he doesn’t know enough about submarines to be of any help except as an observer, so he sits at one of the now-empty weapons consoles and does just that. A medic is cutting Ramius’s shirt away from his injured shoulder and, while he doesn’t flinch, Jack reckons he can see pain in those stormy, resolute eyes. Now it’s no longer an emergency, Mancuso’s orders to his men and the Russian officers are quieter, less urgent, but no less unquestionable. Nobody even tries to argue; what would be the point? They're all military men but he notices a quiet has fallen over them, and the Russians all glance back at the patch of blood on the floor where Borodin had fallen occasionally. It will take a while to get anywhere safe to dock, and Jack already knows that it will feel like even longer.

* * *

Ramius was given a naval escort into the hospital, had to remove his uniform even before that to make doubly sure no observers would know who he or his men were. The helicopter that had carried Vasily from the  _ Reuben James  _ made it here a good few hours before he did, although they’d ended up in America a lot faster than he expected.

The rest of the men have been sent to wherever they’re going to be staying whilst this all goes on, now, but he still needs to go to a hospital for his injured shoulder.

It’s a flesh wound, they tell him, albeit a painful one. He most likely won’t need surgery, but it will also take a while to heal, and to start that off he needs to be very careful with how much he uses his arm. That’s fine by Ramius, it’s not like he has any plans for the foreseeable future. The doctor wants to keep him in for observation overnight, but he refuses. He’s reluctant to let Ramius go, but it’s not like he’s leaving the hospital yet, only going a few floors down. The nurse, the more sensible of the two medical officers he sees, just checks his stitches, and gives him a sling to support his arm and a couple of painkillers, both of which he gratefully accepts.

Ryan rejoins him a few hours later when he’s sat on a bench in an otherwise empty waiting room with armed guards on the door. The guards leave as he sits next to Ramius, his movements still stiff. He’s still wearing the spare clothes Ramius lent him when they were sailing up the river and finally able to look around outside, so he hasn’t been home, probably just caught in debriefs.

They sit in silence for another long stretch of time, Ramius rarely taking his eyes off the door except when he hears a slight hitch in Ryan’s breath as he shrugs off his jacket.

"They're good doctors, Captain. They'll do their best for him," Ryan says finally.

"I'm not stupid, Ryan. Vasily was shot so long before he got any medical attention, and he’s been in surgery for almost eight hours now," Ramius rubs his eyes and finally turns to face him for more than a glance. "He doesn't stand a chance."

It's not Ryan's fault, of course, none of this is. He wishes he could blame it all on the doctor who’d killed Natalia, but he can’t. It’s his wounded heart that brought them here, his responsibility. He hates being here, hasn't even been able to stand being near his own damn submarine's medical rooms, never mind inside a hospital since he lost Natalia, but that's the same reason he can't leave. He got Vasily into this and he won't -  _ can't _ \- let the same thing happen twice. Vasily won't die alone.

Ryan leans back into the chair, shifts uncomfortably. “I’m sure a lot of people said that about me, once.”

Ramius gestures for him to continue, a tired wave of his good arm.

“I was in the Academy, Marines,” he adds when Ramius tilts his head. “We were in Cypress, just a routine training exercise. Something went wrong, the pilot made a mistake, engine failure, I still don’t know, had other things to worry about afterwards. Everyone else died on impact or waiting for help, and I was there with a broken spine and internal bleeding for about three hours before they found the wreck. Without the doctors I never would have made it, definitely never would have walked again."

“But here you are,” Ramius says, trying to contain his bitterness for the moment.

Ryan smiles a little sheepishly, nods. “Here I am. I’m not saying it’s gonna be easy, I’m not saying it won’t take a while, but he had to be strong to make it this far.”

"Stronger than you know," Ramius says quietly, rubs his eyes. “And that’s all true?”

Ryan shifts forwards in his chair and pushes the collar of his sweater down. Ramius sees the top of a thick scar starting between his shoulder blades, faded a little by time but still prominent against his skin. “It’s not something I like to tell anyone but you need to know. Military surgeons are talented people, miracle workers sometimes. Borodin is in good hands.”

Ramius doesn’t respond for a while. Ryan leans back and straightens his sweater again, looking like he regrets even saying any of that, never mind showing his scars.

"Your talents would have been wasted in the Marines, Ryan,” he says eventually, reaching out and gently rubbing Ryan’s shoulder.

He smiles slightly. “Thanks, I think.”

They sit in silence after that. Ramius isn’t in a very talkative mood. He’s so tired, but he needs answers before he can sleep, he needs to see Vasily, alive or dead.

It’s at least another two hours before the doctor enters the waiting room, but he loses track of time after the first one. The doctor in question is a black woman with her hair tightly braided and pulled into a bun on the back of her head, small in stature but with a kind of presence befitting of a general, and is probably in her mid- to late-thirties, but her severe hairstyle and military stance make it difficult to be certain. Ramius stands to attention the second she enters, and out of more than just his concern for what news she might have for him.

“You’re both here for the Russian officer?”

Ramius glances at Ryan, then nods. He can’t speak yet, can only wait for her to tell him the information he needs.

“He made it through surgery. He’s strong,” she adds, with a slight, sympathetic smile that makes her seem younger. “The strongest I’ve seen in awhile.”

“I know," Ramius agrees quietly, feels some of the tension drain out of his shoulders, but not much, not yet. “What are his chances?”

The doctor frowns. “They’re not great. He’s critical so we’ve moved him straight to the ICU. The damage to his heart was minimal, but there was a lot more serious injury to his lungs and some to his liver caused by fragments of the bullet and pieces of his sternum when it shattered. We have him on a ventilator until his lungs start to heal and he can breathe on his own again. The bullet was slowed enough by his sternum that it didn't reach his spine, or chances are he would have died before he reached American soil. Even making it this far was beyond lucky, but now it’s just a matter of waiting."

He swallows his nerves. This isn’t about him, it’s about Vasily. "I need to see him."

She nods.

"You won't be allowed in the room yet, but you can watch from observation," her voice is kind, and she rests a hand on Ramius' good arm before continuing. "He's hooked up to a lot of wires and machines right now. It's maybe going to look a little scary, but it's all there to help him."

He appreciates her treating him gently, like any other family of any other patient. He's glad to be warned, not just expected to keep a stiff upper lip. He’s not sure he could manage that right now, and this doctor is good enough at her job to know that.

She leads them through the double doors she came from and into a small room only furnished with a couple of chairs and a large window into the next room.

Ramius walks up to the glass, any words dragged away from him.

Vasily is on his back in a hospital bed, covered to his waist by a thin sheet. There’s a tube in his mouth and another two protruding from his ribs. His eyes are sunken deep in their sockets and his skin has a similar greyish tinge to it as most corpses. His left arm is stretched out on a stand by the bed to keep it away from the two drains, and to stretch it out for an assortment of tangled IV lines filled with blood and saline and god knew what else. The entrance wound in his sternum and some areas of his stomach are covered by thick patches of gauze but a raw, inflamed incision like an inverted 'T' that starts at the base of his throat and curves around both sides below his pectorals remains uncovered and held together with surgical staples. There are wires attached to his chest leading to one of many machines stacked almost-haphazardly around the bed.

The doctor was right to prepare him as best she could: this is more than scary.

Ramius has seen so many dying men in his time and Vasily looks no different to any of them. He’s alive for now, but in his heart Ramius doubts that will last long. The surgical wounds have a certain desperation to them, huge and raw like they were determined to keep him alive, that any damage done in the process was incidental.

He’s unconscious, thank god, and he hopes they’ll let him stay that way, at least for a little while. It’s a kind of suffering that he would only wish on his worst enemy.

Ramius doesn't let them see a reaction from him, even though he was so close to flinching, even though he can barely stand to stay here, just breathes deeply and keeps watching Vasily through the window.

He sees the doctor take a step back out of the corner of his eye, hears she and Ryan exchange a few quiet words then the door shuts, and Marko finally lets himself feel this. He reaches out with his good arm, presses his hand to the glass. His head falls, but he keeps watching the mechanical rise and fall of Vasily's chest. Something irrational inside him worries that that movement will stop if he looks away.

Marko didn’t want to admit it to himself until now, but he’s scared. He doesn’t remember the last time he was so scared. He only found out what happened to Natalia when it was too late for fear, and he’d looked on stealing the  _ Red October  _ with fatalistic steeliness. This is different. This is something he hadn’t planned for, and he doesn’t have the distraction of a ship to run or plans to make.

After a long moment, Ryan comes back into the room and stands next to him. He doesn't try to reassure him with words this time, it’s bad and they both know it, but just his presence is enough to help, just a little. It’s almost enough to know, for now at least, he isn’t alone.

"The CIA and Naval Intelligence will both want to speak to you in the morning," Ryan says. "But Doctor Lawson is going to tell the navy guys that they're keeping you in overnight because of your shoulder, and I'll be overseeing the initial debrief on the CIA side of it."

"Thank you, Ryan," Ramius says very quietly. He knows he still needs to thank Ryan properly for everything, for believing in him, but earlier they were both too excited by their success and now all he can think of now is Vasily on the other side of the glass.

Ryan gives his good shoulder a gentle squeeze in reassurance. He stays with him for a while, but eventually gives his reasons to leave and, while Marko thanks him again for getting him even these few hours, he doesn’t ask him to stay.

He pulls one of the chairs up to the window and watches the rise and fall of Vasily’s chest. What’s one more night without sleep after all the sleepless nights he’s had already this week?


	2. Chapter 2

They send a car to pick him up from the hotel at 8am, which has only really given Jack enough time to shower all the crap of the last few days off and shave, which is all he’d had time for back on the Enterprise too. It’s a Lincoln, big enough for himself, Greer and Ramius to comfortably fit in the back and perhaps have an off-record conversation before they get to where the  _ Red October _ is docked and have to share everything with Naval Intelligence.

Greer hands him a flask of strong coffee with a folder of papers from the interviews they’d done with the officers the night before, and Jack is reminded why he likes Greer so much even after he gets him into stupid situations like presenting security briefings with no prior warning and, well, all of this. It’s the little things, coffee and asking how his family is doing.

They’re driven back to the hospital to fetch Ramius on their way to the ship.

Ramius seems no less steady than he had been the night before, but Jack reckons there’s a little more darkness around his eyes than there had been; clearly he hasn’t slept much either, if at all.

Jack can't imagine what he's going through. Most of the time when he's been in a hospital, it's because he was in there for his back, not to see someone else. His parents died when he was still in traction, only half way into the twelve months he’d spent like that, he didn't even get to go to their funerals, and he's been lucky enough that Cathy and Sally have never been that sick or hurt. He doesn't ask how Ramius is, that would be pointless, he already knows the answer, doesn't ask about Borodin either; if there had been any real change, someone would have told him by now.

Instead Jack offers him the flask. "Would you like some coffee, sir?"

Ramius shakes his head, but seems grateful for the lack of obvious questions. "Thank you, but I only drink tea."

“You might be grateful for the caffeine when you see what’s in store for you,” Greer says, but Ramius shakes his head again. “When we get to the site, we’re going to do your debrief before anything else, and after that there’s the small issue of the fifty-thousand tons of nuclear submarine you parked in the Penobscot.”

Ramius raises a brow, and his eyes shine with mischief. “If you don’t want it, Admiral, I’m sure my former comrades would love to have it back.”

Greer finally smiles at that.

It seems a little pointless to Jack that they need to debrief Ramius at all. The officers have pretty much filled in all of the necessary blanks, and Ramius proved himself trustworthy when he hadn’t fired on the  _ Dallas _ .

They did individual interviews with the other officers last night, but they all told a similar story; for whatever reason, they all found themselves increasingly disenfranchised with their own country. Some reasons were simple, some were tragic, but all boiled down to the same result; when Ramius had asked them if they would leave with him, it hadn’t taken any of them long to agree to it. They’d worked in cells, almost, until only a few weeks before the maiden voyage of the  _ Red October _ , when Ramius had called them all together to reveal the individual parts of the plan they’d each made. He hadn’t told them everything, certainly not about the letter he planned to send, but they all trusted him completely.

From the brief few moments and polite sentences they’d exchanged the one time they’d met before this, Jack had known Ramius was charming and commanded respect, but even with all the reading he’d done, he still hadn’t realised exactly how much loyalty Ramius built in those around him. He thinks he understands it now. Even Mancuso had been quick to trust him, and he’d been ready to blow the  _ Red October _ out of the water at first and personally shoot Ramius if it came to it when Jack finally persuaded him to come aboard.

When the car finally pulls down the dirt track towards what used to be an old fishing cabin and stops, Ramius waits until Greer has started to walk towards the house, then wordlessly offers Jack a hand out of the car. He hasn’t known Ramius for long, but he thinks if Ramius had given him the same offer he gave to his officers, he would have taken it.

He has to hand it to them; between Naval Intelligence and the CIA, they’ve managed to get a workable base of operations up and running in what would look to any satellite passing overhead like a large cabin by the river  _ overnight _ . There aren’t many cars around, certainly not as many as there had been the night before, just the one that Jack, Greer and Ramius came down in and a few belonging to the guards.

Inside the cabin still looks a little like something from a horror movie; too much dusty taxidermy and too many old bones for Jack’s taste, and it didn’t look like anything had been updated since the fifties at latest. The technology they’ve been bringing in is completely out of place in comparison, much like how Jack feels here in his suit and tie. Like everywhere Jack has seen him, though, Ramius dominates the space around him. He sits back in one of the low, cracked leather chairs and crosses his legs, then looks up and Jack and Greer.

“So, what would you like to know?”

* * *

Ramius is honest with them, as far as Jack can tell.

His wife had never much liked living under Soviet rule; although she’d been in a fairly privileged position, it had hurt her to see others suffering and barely be able to do anything about it. Her death and the failure to so much as discipline the drunk of a doctor who’d killed her during surgery had finally pushed him past the limits of his loyalty. He had spent the last year planning, first inviting Borodin into his confidence then the others with the support of his second-in-command. The _Red October_ hadn’t been the first of his plans, but it was the only one that allowed him to have his choice of trusted allies and to leave on the anniversary of Natalia’s death.

Jack had read the files when writing the CIA's profile of him, but he hadn’t realised that the situation that had killed her had been quite so directly linked to the government her husband had served for over thirty years. There’s a tiredness in Ramius' eyes when he tells that particular part of his story that comes from a lot more than just a few sleepless nights, and an anger too, one Jack hasn’t seen him show before. His revenge on the system that had caused all this hasn’t satisfied him, and he openly admits that, although he also adds that he’s unlikely to try anything else. There’s nothing else he can do from America except tell them everything he knows, and he has no intention of ever going back to Russia.

Greer shuts off the tape recorder after that, and leaves the two of them alone in the dusty room. He knows Ramius might be more open with him, that he sees him as an ally rather than just a politician. Ramius’ guard does go down slightly, but only enough to look a little older, a little more tired.

“Are you going to be okay doing this today?”

Ramius tilts his head. “I didn’t think I had much of a choice either way.”

“It’s not like you can just leave, but it didn’t look like any of your men had managed to get much sleep for the last few days.”

He nods. “It’s been a hard time for all of us.”

“There’s a safehouse on a naval base near the hospital where the others are staying. You can head back there and the others can start to show us around your ship.”

He shakes his head. “I need to do this.”

* * *

Ramius stands still, doesn’t pace like some of the others waiting around. Though the stress flows off him in waves, he’s as unmoving as granite weathering a violent storm, like the submarines he’s spent most of his life on. Though he hasn’t slept in days and lost a lot of blood, he does his best to be completely unwavering, his shoulders square and solid and  _ obviously  _ military to demand respect from the Americans, his expression craggy and distant.

He stands next to a rotting wooden pier a little way from the others, eyes on the dirt road, the only entrance or exit to the site, instead of the Penobscot. His attention is elsewhere, Jack reckons in a hospital room, miles from the seclusion of this riverside.

The officers all stand separately as they were told to. They don’t argue; although Jack knows that they’re all here for the right reasons, not everyone believes it and they know that. It’s a necessary precaution, and all of them obey.

Slavin stands closest to him and, when he thinks no-one is watching them, shifts closer and leans in to speak quietly to him. “They didn’t bring you back to the base where we stayed last night, Captain.”

Ramius doesn’t look away from the road. “Borodin was in surgery for most of the night, I didn’t want to leave him.”

“So Vasily is…” Slavin trails off, not daring to finish the sentence.

“Alive, when I left at least. That’s the best he could have hoped for. Alive,” he repeats, mostly to himself.

Behind them someone clears their throat and says in English “Talking about anything interesting,  _ Comrades _ ?”

The last word is almost spat, and Ramius takes a breath before turning to face an unfamiliar man in a cheap suit.

Greer takes a step closer to them, almost like he wants to put himself between Ramius and the newcomer. “This is Agent Robert Mathias with Naval Intelligence. He’ll be leading the naval side of this investigation.”

Marko takes Mathias in properly. They’re probably about the same age, although Mathias wears his years worse with a combover and frown lines. There’s a certain self-righteousness to his stiff, military stance and the barely concealed disdain in his expression. He resolves to treat the man the same way he would treat a political officer or a party member, which is very carefully. He’s certain any mistake will count against them when the time comes for the final decisions to be made on their lives and freedoms.

Ramius nods in greeting, though it isn’t returned.

“I was telling Mr Slavin that my second in command is still alive,” he says, although he has no idea how Vasily might be now. His heart had stopped once during the night, twice more; once before then once during surgery, and though Lawson’s team had quickly revived him each time, it had hurt Ramius to even have to leave the viewing room, never mind the hospital. “Perhaps not interesting for you, but I thought my men should know.”

Mathias doesn’t seem quite satisfied with that, but Greer ushers him away to talk to Ryan, and it isn’t long before they’re all escorted into boats to head back over to the  _ Red October _ .

The spray of the river water is no warmer than the night before, although it’s noticeably more pleasant than where they left port those long few days ago. He remembers Vasily commenting on the cold like it had a whole other meaning, and being unable to offer any reassurance though he wanted to more than anything.

Anatoly and Yuri seem as nervous as they had been over dinner, though the others are just stoic, waiting for what comes next. Perhaps it hasn’t fully sunk in that they’ve made it yet. Marko isn’t sure it has for him, but he hasn’t had time to think about it, worrying about much more important things.

The American soldiers lead up the ladder to the tower, then Marko and his officers, then Skip Tyler’s team of engineers and Ryan last. Marko watches him look out over the Penobscot with the same wonder he had the night before, like it was new to him although he had to have seen the river a hundred times. Perhaps it had been a while since he’d been back. Marko hopes he’ll agree to come back with him someday in the near future, so they can fish the way they’d spoken about. 

From below deck, they split into groups. They’ve seen the blueprints from Ryan’s sources, but it’s always different being onboard to looking at photos and designs.

Marko himself had been breathtaken the first time he saw her, both the technology and the sheer  _ scale _ . He’d spent his whole adult life aboard submarines, but the  _ Red October _ was a different beast. He knew they’d have to take her apart to fully understand everything about how she worked, and it hurt, somehow. She’d only been his boat for a few months, and he’d been aboard for even less time than that, but the  _ Red October _ was a brand new feat of engineering, something completely different from anything anyone else had ever made before. It was more than a shame to destroy her.

There’s still a blood stain on the floor of the conn when he enters. He tries not to look, stands with his back to it. None of the consoles or technology there are of any use as anything but scrap metal now, shattered and full of bullet holes.

He already has answers to the engineers’ questions, though some of Ryan’s still catch him a little off guard; they have a tendency to be more personal or specific, and he asks them quietly when the others are more interested in the equipment. What were different officer’s regular positions and where did they stand, how much training had they needed to adjust to the new technology? They were sensible questions, but more like he was trying to build a picture of the regular operation of the Conn than actually adding to his investigation. Marko wonders if the questions are more to stop his thoughts from drifting when he doesn’t have anything else to think about, to stop him worrying too much about Vasily. Even if that is just an unintentional side effect, Marko appreciates it.

The engineers don’t need him a lot of the time except for the occasional translation for some of the equipment, and although that doesn’t surprise him, it does wear on him after a while. He sits back in the captain’s chair and watches them start to plan to take apart the ship that had only recently been finished.

The  _ Red October _ ’s maiden voyage would be her last, and the last for her crew.  Marko only hopes that will only be because they won’t be sailors any more, not because one of them will die before he gets another chance.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s been a little over month now since the crew of the  _ Red October _ reached dry land in Maine,  and most of Marko’s meals have been from a vending machine, most of his sleep has been in a chair facing Vasily’s bed. Early on, one of the medical staff had tried to offer him a camp bed in the room, but one of the guards posted on Vasily’s door had shot that down too before he even replied.

The Americans are finally starting to get as bored of the constant interrogations as the rest of them, at least. Ramius is glad; his men were following orders, doing their best to get themselves at least a slightly better life, and it’s actually starting to seem like they might get one.

Each of his officers are still with different teams as the Americans start to disassemble the  _ Red October _ , all working on their own individual sections. Marko is covering the remaining ones, ones they hadn’t found someone he trusted enough for, although outside the modified reactor and caterpillar drives, the American engineers have already shown that they know about most of the different systems and technology. He helps a little with some translations, but after he’s revealed everything he’s willing to say about their plan to defect and the Soviet submarine fleet, it’s mostly down to Melekhin and his engineering expertise to direct the Americans. Most of the men know how to operate their specific areas, but he is the one who knows how everything works down to the last circuit.

Until last week, they still sat them down, sometimes in individual rooms, sometimes as a group, and asked the same questions in case their answers had changed, or stayed just too similar to be the truth.

Ramius is allowed to leave the tiny shipyard that has started to spring up around the  _ Red October  _ early in the afternoon. Only one guard drives Ramius to the hospital now and escorts him inside, but there are still two sailors on the door to the room, and Ramius isn’t certain whether that’s out of concern that someone might hurt them, or to show him who’s in charge.

Vasily is breathing on his own now, he has been for a few days. There’s a clear plastic mask strapped over his face that mists and clears as he breathes instead of the tube down his throat. Doctor Lawson, the same woman who’d saved Vasily’s life on that first night, tells him it’s mostly a precaution at this point, just to make absolutely sure his damaged lungs get enough oxygen to the rest of his body. His chances of recovery get better every day. Barring complications, he'll live, though he'll bear the marks for the rest of his life. At the beginning, it had just been a matter of keeping him alive, they hadn’t cared about the way it would look if he survived, so his chest is a mess of long, thick scars and several smaller, neater incisions from the last surgery he had; removing some particularly damaged part of his liver that hadn’t been healing right.

He's still unconscious. The medical staff are worried about that. Vasily has been fighting hard against his injuries for weeks but he's burned through so much just to stay alive up to this point; Ramius can count his ribs through the freshly scarred skin and his face is gaunt. They’ve told Marko to make sure to tell someone if he shows any sign of change at all, and he would recognise any change by this point. Every second he hasn’t been in meetings or debriefs or explaining features of the  _ Red October _ to American engineers, he’s been sat in this same chair by Vasily’s bed. The pulse of the machines, the numbers on the screens and dials, he’s memorised everything. His fear hasn’t abated since that first night when he wasn’t even allowed in the room, and knowing that Vasily is at least  _ stable  _ is all that has kept him sane.

Ryan and one of the guards have offered him books, magazines, anything to make the hours pass that little bit faster, but so far he’s refused. He brings Natalia’s book of poetry and quotes with him sometimes, some days for himself as an assurance, some days to read out excerpts to Vasily, although he’s certain they aren’t heard. It’s more for his own sake, and he knows it, can’t help but feel Natalia would have been able to help Vasily more than he could, at least reassure them both better than a stoic like Marko. It’s been a little over a year since she died, but the hole in his heart is as screamingly empty as it had been the first day.

Today he’d left the book back in the military safehouse they're still being kept in, so he just sits by the bed in the quiet room with nothing but the air-conditioning and soft whirr of the machines to keep him company. He holds his bad arm to his chest, resenting the injury and the way his age is slowing his healing, and leans back in the chair, pulled close enough to the bed that he can reach to hold Vasily’s hand with the other. It's the most comfortable chair he'd found in the hospital after a few weeks of searching, and it doesn't take him long to settle. He'll stay until they make him leave for the night, which they probably wouldn't do until just before the guards' shift change at around midnight.

Nothing changes in that time. As happens every few days, one of the nurses that comes to change the IV bags takes pity on him and brings him something to eat and some water, but beyond that it passes by slowly, quiet except for the machines and the sound of Vasily's breathing. It seems a little easier today, so perhaps he's recovering, although it doesn’t look like anything has changed.

One of the guards looks in at about eleven thirty, tells him to get ready to go, that it's getting late again. He nods, and the guard leaves him to get himself together. He pulls on one arm of his jacket, just balancing the other over his bad shoulder.

He sighs when he looks down at Vasily’s still, lifeless face, then leans over to run a hand over Vasily's head, pushes his hair out of his face and cups his cheek so gently for a second.

“Goodnight, Vasya,” he whispers.

He would never have dared with this kind of tenderness, to take these kinds of liberties, before now, before they got to America. Here they blame it on his culture, where he's from. The first time he took Vasily's hand, he heard one of the guards muttering something unkind about Europeans. He didn't bother correcting him about his country of origin, he doesn't know what the guards are allowed to know about them, or care about what some small-minded sailor thinks of him. He’s done with allowing the opinions of others to dictate his choices.

He wonders what Vasily would think of all of this if he were awake. Marko wishes he was, for a thousand selfish reasons on top of just hoping for him to recover. He misses his dry wit, the way his expression always stayed deadly serious except for fleeting twitches of the corner of his lips in Marko's direction. That quiet humour that he’s certain many people totally missed would have made the most tedious parts of the last month that much more bearable.

He's known Vasily since the younger man became a submariner a little over twenty-five years ago, considered him a friend for around fifteen. He's not sure exactly when in the last twelve months he started considering that someday they could possibly be even more than that, but he's known that Vasily was interested in men for a long time, even before certain accusations had been made against him. Whether the attraction is mutual is unknown to him, and he's hardly getting any younger so he wouldn't be surprised to be rejected outright, but he hopes he at least gets a chance to ask.

Marko sighs softly and straightens.

He’s about to stand to leave when Vasily opens his eyes.

* * *

Vasily wakes up. His chest throbs steadily with pain, and light burns his eyes even through his eyelids, but he's awake, and that means he's alive. He had been certain he was dying, but somehow he didn't. Somehow, he's here, wherever here is.

He tries to focus on his surroundings a little more, take stock of his injuries and work out where he is. Every time he takes a breath he feels his ribs shifting in his chest, but he's on a strong enough dose of painkillers for it to feel distant, an acknowledgement without the agony he felt before his body started to shut down when he passed out. He's in bed, one about as solid as his submarine bunk, but he can’t feel any engines so he has to be somewhere else. He opens his eyes, just a crack at first to get used to the light.

The room he's in is clearly in a hospital. The lights are bright and artificial and there are no windows, machines hum by his sides. His bed is the only one in the room, which isn’t such a surprise, but there's someone sitting in a chair next to him, which is. He wouldn't have thought they'd let him have visitors.

It’s only when his vision clears a little and he realises that it’s Ramius next to him that suddenly it makes sense; the Captain is a difficult man to say no to, and he holds the most important pieces in this game.

He turns when he hears the change in Vasily’s breathing, and suddenly Vasily’s whole world is his face, in those usually-stony eyes that have suddenly lit up with hope in spite of the dark bags beneath them.

He tries to speak but his mouth and throat are too dry and he feels his lips cracking when he tries to form the words. He ends up coughing instead, bringing tears to his eyes with pain.

Ramius pours a glass of water from a jug by the bed, and Vasily tries to raise a hand to take it from him but his arms feel heavy and weak. Ramius eases his hand back to his side and slides the mask away from his mouth and nose then tilts his head up enough to help him drink. It’s embarrassing that he’s this helpless, especially in front of his captain. He has to remind himself that he should be dead. He can’t be too hard on himself yet. He drinks slowly and Ramius only moves the glass away when he’s done.

"D… did we make it, Captain?" he asks, even though just being here is an answer. His whisper is hoarse and muffled below the oxygen mask, but Ramius understands him all the same.

Ramius smiles, warm with affection and relief. "We did. Welcome to America, Vasily."

Vasily nods, returns the smile with his own far weaker one, then closes his eyes again. Even the few words he’s spoken have hurt and, god, he's so tired.

He feels one of Ramius's warm, rough hands rest on his bare forearm, a simple but effective reassurance: he's safe here, his captain will not let anything happen while he sleeps. Vasily can’t even find the energy to thank him, he can only go back to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Ryan greets Marko in the hospital the next morning in the corridor before he reaches Vasily’s room. They don’t need him at the  _ Red October  _ any more so he’s allowed to spend the day here instead. He’s thankful for that; he needs to be here when Vasily wakes up again.

It takes Marko a second to realise he’s smiling back, probably wider than he has since he arrived here.

"You look… happy," Ryan observes, seeming a little surprised.

“Vasily woke up last night. Only for a few seconds,” Ramius says softly. “And he was in no state to be interviewed, but we spoke.”

“Lawson told me he woke up, but not that. What did he say?”

“He asked if we were successful. He already knew the answer, but I told him anyway.”

"I told you he'd make it.”

Ryan has been the one reassuring Ramius about everything, the only one allowed to see his hesitancy and apprehension. He always reassures Marko that it's all going to be alright, and for the first time he allows himself to start believing that could be true. Vasily still has a long way to go, that much is obvious, but he seems to be through the worst of it now.

Marko feels like Atlas after conning Heracles into taking the world from his shoulders now, like a huge weight has been lifted, whether he’s earned that or not. He takes Ryan's hand and pulls him into a tight embrace.

"You did," he says when Ryan starts to pull away, although it seems a little hesitant. "I should have believed you; you've never given me a reason not to. You've done so much for my men and I."

Ryan takes a step back, clearly a little embarrassed. "I just got lucky."

"If all of this was just good luck, I'd love to see what happens when you have a plan, Ryan."

He grins lopsidedly. “Yeah, so would I.”

Ramius reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. “You have great things ahead of you. I’m certain of it.”

“We’ll see about that,” he says a little sheepishly, but Marko sees more than a hint of pride in his eyes.

“So, is there a reason you’re waiting out here?”

“The Naval Intelligence officer doesn’t want me starting the debrief without him, and honestly, with everything your friend has been through I’m not sure I want to wake him.”

“I’ll tell you when he wakes again,” Ramius agrees, although if Vasily asks him not to, he’ll easily break his word this time.

Ryan seems to read his thoughts. “It’s not desperate. If he doesn’t want to talk to us, he doesn’t have to yet. Between you and the others, we have the full story, we just need his statement.”

Ramius nods. He didn’t expect that much, even from Ryan.

Ryan hesitates. “But, uh, don’t tell Mathias I said that, okay?”

He smiles again. “You’ve trusted me so far, Ryan, I do not think you need to worry now.”

* * *

Vasily wakes with a gasp. When he was awake before, the medication was strong enough to hold off the pain but he hasn’t had that luck this time around. It almost feels as though someone is standing on his chest until he forces himself to breathe more normally even through the mask.

The room is quieter now; there are less machines, and he wonders how long he’s been here. Ramius, still in the same chair, is watching him with tired eyes, one hand resting on his, the other arm in a sling beneath his jacket, something he’d been too woozy to notice the last time he was awake. Vasily wouldn't be surprised if he hadn't moved since the last time he was awake.

He narrows his eyes in concern.

Ramius ignores that and smiles. "Good morning."

He raises a hand to his face, the one he can’t feel any needles in the back of, lifts the oxygen mask away so he can speak properly.

"Captain, your arm," he whispers, voice hoarse, keeping his words to a minimum, trying to save himself some pain but needing to know what happened to Marko while he was unconscious.

Ramius shrugs stiffly. "It's a flesh wound, just a little souvenir from the man who almost killed you. You should be more concerned about yourself. How are you feeling?"

He considers that for a long few seconds. "Tired.”

Ramius nods like he isn't surprised. He'd know better what to expect than Vasily himself right now; all he knows is that he was shot, then woke up here.

The pain is starting to ease a little, or maybe he's just getting used to it. He takes as deep a breath as he dares from the mask, feeling tears rising in his eyes but ignoring them, and tries for a full sentence this time.

"How long have I been asleep?"

"Asleep? Fifteen hours, but you were unconscious here for almost five weeks before last night."

“That is a long time to miss,” he says softly. How much must have happened since he was shot?

“You’re doing better than they thought," Ramius says gently, and he knows he was right to think he was a dead man, it seems as though the doctors had too. “A long recovery is to be expected after what happened to you.”

“I thought I was dead,” he agrees. “Anything is better than that.”

Ramius frowns and starts to reach out for him, then seems to think better of it. Vasily tries not to show his disappointment. Ramius continues, but changes the subject.

“I'm supposed to tell the guard outside when you wake up. The Americans want to speak to you," he says, voice gentle. "But I'll only do that if you feel you can. My loyalty is with my officers, with  _ you _ , not the American government."

Vasily nods again. “I’ll talk to them.”

Ramius stands, movements stiff, and walks to the door. He exchanges a few quiet words with one of the guards, who looks around the door at him to confirm. Vasily acknowledges him with a nod, and he seems surprised. He hasn’t seen Vasily conscious before.

Ramius sits back by the bed as the guard starts to speak in hushed tones into a radio.

They don’t talk again while they wait, but that’s fine. They know each other well enough that the silence is comfortable, reassuring even. Vasily feels safe here, in spite of everything, despite the pain and the still-jarring revelation of the time he’s missed. He always does when he’s at Ramius’s side.

He’s not sure how much time passes before there’s movement outside the room again, the shapes of two men through the small window in the door, he’s still drifting thanks to the painkillers and exhaustion.

Ramius straightens his shirt under his sling and nods at Vasily. “Good luck. A warning; you know Ryan is a good man, but his companion is a bureaucrat. Treat him the same way you would a political officer.”

“Though not the way you treated Putin, I assume, Captain?” he says, and Ramius looks at him with a sternness that doesn’t quite mask his dark amusement.

“No, not like that, Vasily. I think it would be for the best if no-one else was killed just yet.” He starts to stand again. Vasily notes the ‘yet’ and wonders just how much the man had been irritating him whilst Vasily was unconscious.

"Don't go," Vasily manages to reach out for his sleeve then gasps in pain as it tugs at the stitches in his chest and the tubes in his hand and forearm. Ramius turns, takes his arm where it’s frozen in pain and very gently folds it back over his chest.

“They’ll want to speak to you alone. I’ll be back when they’re done, I promise,” he says softly, squeezes his hand with his own larger, warmer one.

Vasily nods, though even that hurts him and watches him walk to the door like it’s the last time they’ll ever speak. He knows, logically, that it won’t be, but his chest is filling with tight anxiety along with the lingering pain of his wounds. 

Ryan catches Ramius’s arm as he walks past.

"Have you eaten since yesterday? Slept?”

Ramius shrugs, and Ryan frowns.

“At least go get something to eat from the canteen, sir. This is probably going to take a while.”

Marko frowns, but nods, and Vasily is glad that there’s been someone to look out for his captain while he hasn’t been able to. One of the men on the door follows him when he leaves.

The other American is a man he doesn’t recognise, who introduces himself as Agent Robert Mathias with Naval Intelligence. He’s probably about the same age as Ramius, perhaps slightly younger, almost bald and keeps the rest of his gray hair cropped close to his head, and is wearing a sharply-pressed suit and ugly tie. Ryan is wearing black slacks, a white shirt, and a grey blazer, less formal, less intimidating. Vasily suspects that’s intentional, especially when he’s sitting next to Mathias. They sit in the chairs closest to the bed, Mathias choosing the one Ramius had just vacated. Both of them get out tape recorders and legal pads.

Vasily doesn’t try to move to face them better, after how much it hurt to move his arm to catch Ramius, he knows sitting would be too much to even consider trying, and it’s not like he’s here to impress anyone, so he just turns his head slightly, shifts enough that it doesn’t hurt so much to briefly lift the mask away from his face to speak.

They ask him what their plan had been in coming to America and how long they’d been planning, and he tells them. As Ramius’s right hand man throughout everything, he’s in a better position to answer than some of the others. They’d kept it in cells, for the most part; each officer had known his own part and not much else in case they were caught out and questioned. They only learned more when the time finally came for them to begin their journey. Vasily knew almost the whole thing from the beginning, gently steered Ramius towards better routes, suggested ways to get past certain obstacles, the more reliable officers. It takes a while for him to explain everything, having to stop regularly to catch his breath, to think of the right English words and phrases with his head still fuzzy from the medication, but they get through it slowly but surely. When his head is clear, his English is almost perfect but filled with painkillers and fresh out of a coma? Not so much.

Ryan is the more gentle of the two, tactful with his phrasing, where Mathias is succinct to the point of being almost rude, presses more. Vasily knows the questioning is necessary, but he’s still so tired and speaking hurts so much that he wishes he could be allowed a little leeway, at least for the moment.

“The last answer we need for now,” Ryan says, leaning forwards. “Is why you decided to join Captain Ramius.”

He takes as deep a breath as he can. “You say that as if there was ever another option, Ryan.”

Mathias leans forwards. “You were forced?”

Vasily gives a soft snort of derision then rubs his chest. He didn’t expect that to hurt so much. “No. Not at all. The Captain draws people to him. Like,” he stumbles over the words, looks to the Americans for assistance which they don’t provide. He supposes they need to have his words for this with no prompting. “Like a magnet. They called him Schoolmaster for a reason."

“So what does that make you? The teacher’s pet?” Mathias says, raising an eyebrow.

Vasily almost laughs, but manages to keep it to a raised eyebrow of his own and a slight twitch at the edge of his lips. He has a reputation to uphold, even if exhaustion is eating into his self-control with every minute this interview drags on. “Perhaps. We have been friends for many years and Captain Ramius is the only commanding officer I've ever had who stood up for me during hard times. It seems only fair that I repay him, and I had no real connections left back home."

“That hardly seems a good reason to leave your whole life behind.”

“Tell me, Agent Mathias, what would  _ you  _ consider a good reason for a man to leave his life and country behind? I’m sure you’ve heard enough different ones from the rest of the men.”

Mathias starts to answer, then trails off.

Vasily sighs, rubs his eyes with his right hand, the one without the cluster of IV needles in it. “All I want is some freedom. Perhaps I can find it here, if I survive this. That's part of your American Dream, isn't it?"

Mathias frowns, but nods. “Something like that.”

“Do you have what you need?”

“For now,” Mathias says with a shrug. Vasily only hopes that they wait until he’s feeling a little stronger to continue with anything else.

Mathias leaves first, Ryan takes a few more minutes to pack up his things, then turns to Vasily when he’s gone.

“I’m sorry about him.”

Vasily gives a dismissive shrug. “It has to be done, and that was one of the most polite interrogations I’ve ever been through.”

Ryan tilts his head at that, not quite seeming to know if he’s joking or not. He hasn’t completely lost his poker face, at least. It’s a small source of satisfaction, but it does give him a little warmth.

He raises his brows slightly. “That was a joke, Ryan. If I’d been through many more interrogations than this, it’s very unlikely I’d be here speaking to you.”

“I like that you seem to think that’s even remotely reassuring,” Ryan says with a slightly bemused smile. “I think I’m starting to get why some of your crew think you don’t have a sense of humour.”

He shrugs again, smiles slightly this time. “I see you’ve been talking to Slavin.”

“He didn’t have a lot of good to say about anyone, in all fairness.”

“He never does. However, in spite of all his…” Vasily pauses and raises an eyebrow. “Bitching, he is one of the best diving control officers our navy has ever produced, certainly the best I’ve ever worked with. What's so funny?"

"He said something similar about you. He might not like you, but he does respect you. They all do."

He doesn't quite know how to answer that. For the time they'd been planning this, Vasily had been fairly certain that they only followed his orders or accepted his ideas because of how much loyalty they had for Ramius. It's a surprise to find out there might have been some for him there too. Ryan smiles again, a little kinder this time. "Thanks for your cooperation. I'll tell your Captain that we've finished here on my way out."

"Thank you, Ryan."

Ryan closes his briefcase with a snap and offers him a nod, then follows Mathias out of the room.

Ramius is true to his word, back in Vasily's room just minutes later.

"How did it go?"

"As you said, Mathias is a bureaucrat. I’m Russian,” he says with a slight twitch of his lips. “One thing I can deal with is bureaucrats."

"And Ryan?"

“Ryan is a very rare thing; I don’t think I’ve ever met an honorable man before.”

Ramius leans back in his chair and raises his brows. "What about me?"

Vasily can't stop his soft snort of amusement. "You can't honestly tell me you did all this out of the goodness of your heart."

"Perhaps not, but all that matters is that we did the right thing, regardless of whether our reasons were selfish."

“After everything we’ve done to get here, it would be nice to think so," he whispers, thinks about the last six months. He hasn't let himself look back yet, it seemed pointless to reassess his actions before their goal was realised. It has taken so much hard work to get here, and now it seems just as difficult to simply keep his eyes open.

Ramius takes his hand in his without another word, so very gentle. Vasily tries not to take too much pleasure in it, tries to remind himself that it’s just an offer of a little comfort in his time of need.

It doesn’t take him long to fall asleep now he knows he’s not alone.


	5. Chapter 5

It’s late afternoon before he wakes again, this time to Ramius gently telling him that it’s time to wake up.

Vasily squints against the artificial lighting and rubs his eyes with one hand. When his vision clears there’s a black woman in American navy uniform and a lab coat in the room with them now: a doctor.

His dry throat itches when he breathes, makes him cough. His ribs shift in his chest, threatening to break the skin, and tears come to his eyes again. Ramius lets him squeeze his hand, though his grip is pathetically weak, then helps him drink like he did the first time he awoke, so careful and reassuring. His thumb rubs the back of Vasily's neck while the rest of his hand supports his head. Vasily still hates feeling this way, but he’s so grateful to have Ramius at his side for it.

The water tastes different here to how it tasted back home. He wonders if that’s an odd thing to notice, if he’ll get used to it in time or if he’ll always remember the difference.

“Thank you,” he manages, finally.

“Don’t push yourself too hard,” the doctor says before Ramius can reply, gently but making it clear that it’s an order not just a suggestion. “You’ve been unconscious for over a month, and those government guys who were in here earlier shouldn’t have expected so much of you yet after everything you’ve been through. Don’t use two words where one will do, and if you can nod instead of speaking that’ll be even better. You understand?”

Vasily nods.

“Good. I’m Doctor Lawson,” she says. “Usually surgeons don’t get so involved with our patients, but we were told to keep the number of people in contact with your crew down to the bare minimum. I don’t mind so much, your commander is a lot politer than most of the patients’ families I usually have to talk to.”

Ramius smiles slightly at that. He’s always been good at charming people and some things never change. He knows exactly when to be a gentleman and when to make a much less gentlemanly comment or joke, how to phrase things to just the right effect. His charisma isn’t lost in his English.

“I’m going to explain to you what’s happened since you got here. Are you ready to hear that?”

Vasily hesitates, then nods again.

"You've had six surgeries so far, and you're going to need at least one more," Lawson explains. “The bullet shattered your sternum and fragments of the bone and bullet caused a lot of internal injuries, the worst to your lungs and liver. The next surgery will be to pin what’s left of it back together; until a few days ago we were hoping it would heal alright on its own, but the last scan we did showed the fragments have become more displaced.”

He can still feel the bones in his chest moving when he breathes, and is just glad to get an explanation for that, never mind a solution. He nods instead of trying to form words for the third time; as long as he understands what is being said, Lawson has made it clear that she doesn’t need him to be a great conversationalist, she just wants him to rest.

“More importantly than all that,” she says with a slight smile. “How are you feeling?”

“I’ve been better,” he says with a slight shrug that hurts more than it should. He takes a deep breath from the oxygen mask and exhales in a sigh. “It hurts.”

Lawson checks the chart from the end of the bed. “We’ve got you on pretty much the strongest safe dose of this particular painkiller. We can try something else when it’s out of your system, but for now all I can offer you is some ice for the pain.”

“Please,” he says, trying to keep his voice from sounding like a plea. He’s not sure he succeeds.

“It’ll keep hurting for another few weeks, but that should improve after your next surgery. I’ll get a nurse to bring you some ice when I leave.”

He nods.

“It’ll be a week before you get that surgery; it needs to happen but it’s also not going to kill you before we operate, and it’s probably better if we give you a little time to get some of your strength back. The six you already had have been to fix the damage the bullet did to your heart, lungs and liver. The first was just to make sure you survived the night, which are where the worst of the scars are from. Your captain tells me you don’t smoke, so that isn’t such a problem, but you’re going to be more sensitive to heat, humidity and pressure changes for at least a few months, so try to stay aware of that, and be careful.” Lawson waits for another nod then asks Ramius to repeat what she just said in Russian when it doesn’t come. He understood the first time, but there’s no point protesting. It just gives him some more time to process the information.

Vasily frowns, reaches up very slowly, gingerly to rub his eyes, cautious not to move in the way that had hurt so much when he’d tried to catch Ramius’ hand before. His hands are clammy against his eyelids, and a couple weeks worth of beard on his cheeks scratch at the heels of his palms. Has he really been so out of it that he didn’t notice that until now?

“I understand,” he says eventually.

"You’re very lucky just to be alive, Mr Borodin, although you might not feel it yet.”

“I know.” The details just make it that much more real, like this is something that has actually happened to him, like he actually has missed all this time. This isn’t all going to go away overnight. He hesitates for a second. “Thank you.”

She just smiles at that. “It’s my job.”

“Even if it was just a normal day for you, it matters to me. To all of us,” Ramius interjects before Vasily can answer for himself. There’s an intensity in his eyes. Ramius is a passionate man, and over the last year he’s seen that look more often than ever before, but it’s the first time it’s been on his behalf.

She smiles again, and this time it doesn’t seem like just a platitude, then continues telling them about what he needs to do to take care of himself. He can tell Ramius is noting all the information just in case he can’t remember himself later. Vasily doesn’t know if he will or not, with all the other weight on his mind. Lawson leaves, and Ramius starts to put his jacket on.

“I have to go,” Ramius says gently. “I have a checkup for my shoulder.”

Vasily nods, still taking Lawson’s advice. She was right, it hurts less to nod, it doesn’t make him feel so exhausted so quickly.

Ramius reaches out and squeezes his forearm for a second, then stands. “I’ll be back later. You won’t be alone for long.”

Vasily smiles slightly. It’s an honour to get this much attention from Ramius, even after having known him for so long. He’s never had this before, not so intense, so focused on him and how he’s doing. Vasily wonders if Ramius knows just how much it matters to him, wonders if he would ever have known this if he’d never taken that bullet. Would it have been easier to accept it if he was well, not filled with painkillers and a month of fog, or harder?

“I’ll be fine.”

Marko nods, then leaves him alone for the first time since he woke up.

He lays still, catches his breath, stares at the stained white tiles of the ceiling. The room is cool, smells fresh in spite of the lack of windows or obvious vents. It’s also small, only just big enough for the bed, medical equipment and the two chairs. After a few minutes, one of the Americans from outside enters and hands him a bag of ice, then he’s alone again.

It’s only when he shifts the blanket to put the ice pack on his chest that he catches sight of the scars for the first time.

He supposes he was given enough warning; Lawson did tell him that he'd had surgery, but he wasn't expecting there to be  _ so much _ . There are shining lines of angry red and pink all across his torso, long and short, thick and thin, intersecting and on their own. The bullet wound in the centre of his chest is actually a better one, smaller even if it is deep. The worst are the thick line that goes vertically down the centre of his chest to meet the other that cuts from one side of his ribs to the other. Those ones are shining ridges of fresh, raised scar tissue, lined on each side by dots caused by staples or stitches tied too tightly. The others are mostly thinner, just as new and pronounced, but not as angry, desperate. Along the bottom right side of his ribcage then curving up towards his sternum is the freshest, a reddish valley, thinner than the older ones. 

He's numb as he takes it in at first, just analytical. It takes a few minutes for it to really sink in that this pale, all-too-thin body is his own, that these scars are what will greet him when he looks down for the rest of his life. Between the beard, the scars and the weight he’s clearly lost, he reckons that if he were to look in the mirror now, he wouldn’t recognise himself.

He sighs softly. This is far from the first time he's had to get used to looking at obvious scars. Though the one across his forehead has faded to just a slight crease now, only visible in certain light and when he frowns, when he was young it had been a lot worse, and it's in a far more visible position than his new ones will ever be. It’s something he’s taken a lot of shit for over the years, and he survived that. He just has to keep reminding himself.

He doesn’t even mean to close his eyes, but before he knows it he’s drifting off, one hand still holding the ice to his chest.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this being a week late. No excuses really, just haven't sat down and written it. Should be a little longer than the last few though, so that's something.

The week passes quickly in blurred moments. He’s in and out of consciousness, between awake and asleep for the first few days. Some of it he remembers after, other parts not so much. Sometimes he and Ramius talk, sometimes he’s so tired or hurting so much he can barely open his eyes. Every time, Marko helps him to drink and to eat when they finally let him do that. The food is bland and underwhelming, but he’s not sure he could take anything richer yet.

His seventh and (Vasily hopes) final surgery passes without an issue, although he feels even more stiff with the wire and screws in his chest than he did when he'd only just regained consciousness, but he's healing albeit slowly, painfully.

Ramius is almost always still there by his bedside, whether he wakes during the day or night, even though it’s been a long time since they got here, and his injuries are highly unlikely to kill him now.

Ryan has also become a more common presence in his room now he can stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time, but he’s rarely there at the same time as Ramius. They talk a little, or more accurately Ryan tries to speak Russian and Vasily corrects his pronunciation or phrasing occasionally. It still hurts for him to speak too much, but he can listen. He doesn’t need much energy to listen.

He’s found that he quite likes the young American’s company, in spite of his best efforts. Vasily had thought that the slightly awkward charm he displayed back on _Red October_ had been an affectation at first, but after spending a little more time with him he knows it’s real now. He certainly doesn’t fit any image of a CIA agent that Vasily has ever heard, but then he still insists he’s no agent, just a historian, and everything Vasily has heard about men like him until now has been through government propaganda anyway.

He brings Vasily books, fiction, Russian to English dictionaries, travel guides and books about Montana. It isn’t much like he expected, but it’s _real_ , these books cement it so much more than the images he’d had of it from the old novels he’d managed to get hold of back home. He’s not sure if he’ll stay in Montana forever; there’s a whole country out there and no papers needed to travel through it, but for now it’s where he wants to start out at least. Ryan made a note when he first mentioned it, said he’d do his best to get something in place. Vasily doesn’t think there are words for how grateful he is, in English or in Russian.

Ryan arrives at his room one morning almost two weeks in, just a little later than Ramius usually got there, and he’s strong enough to hold a conversation today. Ryan, on the other hand, looks exhausted.

They talk, Ryan asks him how he's feeling in Russian and he replies in English, a routine they've started to build, although it takes a little longer for Ryan to respond today. 

"So," Ryan says after a while, leaning forward. "Why Montana?"

"The Captain told you that’s where I want to go. He did not tell you why?"

Ryan shakes his head. "Hasn't told us anything much about you or the rest of your men's personal lives. I heard you say it before you passed out, that you'd like to see it."

"I thought I would never get the chance," he says quietly, tries to pass it off with a shrug instead of letting the hurt show. “I’ve read about America, anything I could get since I was old enough to want to learn, and I thought I would die almost within sight of it."

"I don't think Ramius would let that happen," Ryan says with a small smile. "I'm not asking just to pry; I've done my best to get any of your men who had an idea of where they wanted to go somewhere to live there. Was there somewhere specific in Montana, somewhere else if I can't call in the right favours to make that happen?"

"I thought about Arizona. It's warmer there, isn't it?"

Ryan nods. "The heat might be better for you for a while after your injuries."

Vasily nods, frowns slightly. "Mostly I just want to be somewhere quiet. My whole life has been spent in cities and on submarines with a hundred other men. I would like some peace after all this time."

Ryan seems to make a mental note of everything important he just said, repeats the part about wanting some quiet very quietly, thoughtfully. Vasily doesn't know if he realises that he's doing it. 

"I'll do what I can to get you somewhere in one of those places."

"Thank you," he says with a grateful nod, manages to lever himself somewhere slightly closer to a sitting position. “Tell me, did Ramius ask you to be here when he couldn’t be, or did you volunteer?”

“I volunteered,” Ryan hesitates, then runs a hand through his hair and smiles sheepishly. “Actually, it took some persuading. The first time, he didn’t want to leave you alone but they needed him for the final debrief on your ship. I said I’d stay with you when he couldn’t.”

He nods. Warmth spreads in his chest knowing that. “And now?”

“He had the final checkup on his shoulder this morning, then I finally got him to go back to the base and sleep in a bed for a few hours instead of in this chair.”

"I'm glad someone is there for him while I can’t be.”

Ryan's smile is less sheepish this time, but just as tired. “Ramius said the same thing about you.”

He can’t speak for a second. He knew Ramius had been worrying about him, but not that much, not so much that he wanted someone else to be around whenever he couldn't be."Not that I am ungrateful, but go home, Doctor Ryan."

Ryan seems conflicted, hesitates for a moment. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’m fine. I'd like some time to think, and you look like you need some sleep.”

“That obvious, huh?”

“The bags under your eyes are almost as bad as mine, and as far as I’m aware, you weren’t shot in the chest recently.” He raises an eyebrow and Ryan shakes his head.

"I've had to work hard for this. Every decision I've made has had pushback from somewhere. It seems to be cooling off a little now, but I swear the next time I find out about something like this happening, I'm just going to send a memo," he rubs his eyes. "My wife and daughter came out here a few weeks ago, but I know Cathy's itching to get back to London already."

"You stayed all this time?"

Ryan nods. "I started all this, I have to see it through to the end."

The tone of his voice makes it clear that this is not about orders, so Vasily doesn't try to suggest that it's over now, at least as over as it's likely to be. They'll spend the rest of their lives looking over their shoulders.

"As I said, go home. Sleep, do something with your daughter," he gives him a slight smile, although it probably comes out more like a grimace. "There's nothing else you can do here."

Ryan nods, and moves to stand. He says his goodbyes and leaves Vasily to his own thoughts.

He tries to sit up straighter, but between atrophied muscles and everything damaged in the fallout of his injury, he can't do it. He gets about halfway before he starts to shake from the exertion and pain, so he gives up on that for now. The medical staff have told him he needs to start moving again, but his whole body is stiff and his muscles have wasted from lying down for so long, and every movement makes bone shift, pulls at stitches. Marko is always willing to help, but Vasily never wants to ask any of the medical staff or Ryan.

Instead he just tries to get a little more comfortable again and reaches for one of the books Ryan had left one of the times he visited and a ballpoint pen he'd borrowed from one of the nurses. There are empty pages at the back of the books and since he's been able to, he's been using them to sketch on. His hands are still too thin, a little shaky at times, especially with the angle he has to hold the page at when he's lying back in the bed. Vasily is no real artist, but it calms him, gives him something to focus on even if it's just the way the electric light falls on the machines next to the bed, although that concentration can also be draining, weak as he is. He keeps it up, though; it keeps his hands busy while he tries to think. He tries not to think about the number of times he's drawn Ramius, both here and all the time he'd known him before. It's a few hours of that and actually reading before he's disturbed.

He quickly turns to a different page when the knock comes on the door. He recognises it as Ramius' knock, Ryan's isn't as heavy, and the nurses and guards rarely bothered to warn him before coming in.

Ramius is better, more like himself than he has been since Vasily woke from the coma. It's been hard on him, Vasily has to wonder when the last time he slept the full night in bed had been, if just a few hours had helped so much.

"Good afternoon." Ramius smiles at him, and he closes the book and puts it back in the stack with the others Ryan has been bringing him. Ramius stays standing at first, instead of taking his usual place in the chair by the bed.

“Where’s Ryan?”

“I sent him home. He needed to rest.”

"And you don't?"

“I’ve been resting for almost two months," he says with a slight shrug. "And I could say the same about you."

Ramius hesitates as if he's about to argue, then nods. "Would you like to sit? Do you need help?"

Vasily nods, trying not to seem too sheepish, and starts to lever himself from the bed.

Ramius takes his hand, places his other hand on Vasily’s back to steady him as he slowly straightens.

“Are you alright?” Ramius whispers right next to his ear, reaching the arm that had been supporting Vasily the rest of the way around him, holding him close.

"It hurts," he manages, feels a bead of cold sweat roll down his temple, leans into Ramius’s grip. He wishes he could enjoy this, but the pain is too much for him to be able to focus on anything else now.

"I know, Vasily." He rubs gentle circles between Vasily's shoulder blades. "Stay strong. Remember, you're through the worst of it."

He nods, tries to force something of a grateful smile even through the pain. It takes a while for him to get his breath back and find his voice. "Thank you for staying with me."

"I couldn't just leave you here alone in a strange place, in a strange country," he pauses, pulls away and sits down in the chair again. "You were only shot because of me."

He manages to straighten a little more, just enough to look Ramius in the eyes, see the regret. Vasily wishes he hadn’t moved out of reach, wishes he could take his hand again. "It was my choice to make."

He’d decided this was a cause he’d die for at the start of all this, had known he’d always stand by Ramius even longer than that. He knew that they would be heading straight into danger, although he was sure - and he supposes Ramius was too - that either they would all survive or none of them would, that there wouldn’t be a situation like the one they’d been thrown into.

"I know, and a damned stupid one at that."

Vasily shakes his head. "It was the right decision."

Ramius frowns. “For weeks, I’ve watched you fighting for your life. At the start of this, you couldn’t even breathe without a machine. It’s been over a month and you’re still stuck in here, in this bed. That was the right decision?"

“I know,” _God_ , he knows. He raises a hand to his chest again, tries to massage some of the pain away. “I said it was the right decision, not that it was a good one for me, but we’re all still here. That must count for something.”

"Of course it does," he says, a lot more gently this time, though he doesn't move back towards him. There’s still that guilt there, the same guilt Vasily sees every time he speaks about Natalia. "It's just that if you'd died for my sake, I would never have been able to forgive myself."

Vasily is quiet for a while; he has to think carefully through what he says next. He _couldn't_ have just let Ramius die there, even if the cost had been his own life. It was beyond just loyalty to his captain, beyond knowing that Ramius was the crew’s best shot to negotiate their freedom with the Americans. Ramius has been the only one who has ever given him a chance, the only reason he'd got as far in his career as he had. He was probably the only reason Vasily had even still had a career and wasn't in some prison cell, labour camp or even dead; he knew he was out of favour with the party, had been for a while now. The nephew of some half-important member had seen him out with a man when he’d been on shoreleave, reported him for homosexuality, but there was no proof aside from that one account from a man who was barely relevant. Ramius had quietly taken him aside when the accusations were brought forward and told him that he’d do his best to keep him safe from it all. He’d never asked whether the accusation was true or not, although Vasily suspects that was because he knows it is, rather than to have plausible deniability.

“If you think I acted the way I did because you were my superior, or because I owe you something, you’re wrong. The world is a far better place with you in it, Marko."

Ramius hesitates, and for a second a heavy frown creases his brow, making him look all of his sixty years and more, though one eyebrow twitches at the informality. He should get used to it; he isn’t a captain any more, not here. “You say that like you are not just as important.”

Vasily doesn’t have a reply to that. He almost wants to argue; he is not the one who came up with the idea to defect, not the one who made the most important parts of their plan, certainly not the one with enough friends and connections in the officer corps to pull this off. He stops himself. Ramius would never say that if he didn’t mean it, and denying him would feel like an insult.

Ramius sees him hesitate and sighs. “At least, you are to me.”

“Thank you, Captain,” he says, letting himself slip back into formality but finally letting himself reach out for Ramius, as if addressing him by his title cancels out the familiarity of casual touch.

Ramius takes his hand between both of his own without hesitation. His smile reassures Vasily that he was right to reach out. This newfound closeness is almost worth the pain he's endured to find it.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short one this week, but I like it and I hope you do too ^_^

Vasily stands slowly.

His legs feel weak beneath him, and he leans against the rail on the edge of the bed, knuckles white at the effort. He feels Ramius’ presence hovering just behind him, ready to catch him if he falls. Vasily wants to wave him off, tell him he just needs a second to catch his breath, but he knows he might actually need his help. It's been almost two months since he was shot and his muscles are already aching from just getting out of bed. He walks, staggers really, as far as the chair that Ramius has been using and sits down again, already out of breath.

Ramius squeezes his shoulder, frowns like all of this is hurting him as much as it is Vasily.

_ This is progress _ , Vasily wants to tell him,  _ this means he’s getting better _ , but he can’t speak yet, still getting his breath back, almost wishing for the oxygen mask he had for the first days he'd been awake.

A few days ago he wouldn’t have been able to stand, never mind walk as far as the chair. A week ago he couldn’t even sit without help. His legs might have forgotten how to follow basic commands, but he’s working on it, will keep working on it until he’s at least  _ close  _ to his old self. His progress so far hasn't been easy, but it has been far faster than it could have been, steadier. He’s never been hurt this badly before, but he has had enough minor injuries, been in enough fights that he knows his limits and how far he can afford to push himself before it will push his recovery back.

Ramius sits down next to him, the concern still painted on his face through the deepened lines on his forehead and around his eyes, but doesn’t ask if he's alright, they both know the answer to that; he’s as good as he can be, given the circumstances. Vasily manages a slightly weak smile, falling short of reassurance but wanting to offer something at least.

He isn't used to this, neither the pain nor the kindness and attention that has accompanied it. When he looks Ramius in the eyes, he sees uncertainty, nowhere near the same man who looked around his conn, turned to Vasily and told him to let the men sing. He wonders how many people have seen that particular look: Natalia, certainly, medical staff both here and at home, Ryan perhaps, as he watched Ramius in waiting rooms and by his bedside? It's an exclusive group. He never wants to put him in the position where that look is on his behalf ever again.

It's more than that, perhaps, more than mere concern, but he doesn't allow himself to dwell on that, much less act on his suspicions. He shouldn't be spending more than another few days in the hospital, then they'll take him to wherever he'll start his new life; Montana, Arizona, he's beginning to find he doesn't mind all that much as long as he can travel, see other places too. Even if he  _ had  _ been able to get hold of the right papers, he's never had the time before. He has no idea if they'll be allowed to stay in contact in their new lives. Perhaps it's more than that, too. Perhaps he'd rather never know how Ramius really feels about him if it means he'll never be rejected. Ramius had been married for decades, had never shown any sign of an interest to the contrary, although god knew he had been a dedicated husband, had never looked at another woman twice either. He was still grieving too; sometimes making their plans had been the only thing that had kept him anchored and steady.

Regardless of Ramius' intentions, Vasily appreciates the company. It makes the silence of the room now that most of the machines are gone that little bit less oppressive, even when they aren’t talking. Ramius has always been the more talkative one anyway, even before he had the excuse of his chest injuries.

Today they’re both quiet for a long while; they both have books to read and things to think about, but eventually Ramius speaks.

“You don’t have to call me ‘Captain’ any more, you know that don’t you? In fact, from what I understand, the Americans would rather you didn’t, especially when we’re speaking English.”

“I know I don’t have to,  _ Captain _ ,” he says pointedly in English, allowing himself a smirk when Ramius rolls his eyes at him. He continues, still in English, he may as well start getting used to speaking it. “What would you rather I call you?”

He’s joking, mostly, content to keep to calling him by his surname, but Ramius hesitates.

“I think we’ve known each other long enough to be on first name terms, don’t you, Vasily?”


	8. Chapter 8

The day for him to leave the hospital finally comes, just a day before everyone else leaves to their new lives. Ramius is staying; he refuses to leave Vasily alone with the Americans, still distrustful of what they might do to him, although he seems confident that the others will be safe. The change of guard brings a bag with some new clothes in it, it wasn’t like he could wear his uniform; even if it hadn’t been ruined, it wouldn’t exactly be inconspicuous.

Inside is a plain white button-up shirt and a pair of black slacks. They're letting him keep and use anything that doesn't have any military badges or logos on it, most importantly his boots. He has enough to think about without worrying about new shoes. They're not as well polished as he usually keeps them but he's sure he'll have the chance to deal with that later. It's a little more difficult to comb his hair and shave; he's physically incapable of raising his arms above a certain point yet, and even as high as his face starts to hurt after a few short minutes.

His reflection in the bathroom mirror looks… normal, almost. He looks like himself. He's still gaunt, his cheeks are hollow and jaw and brows are sharp, but after almost two months, he's not looking as bad as he could, all things considered. 

A doctor, not Lawson, some specialist he’s never met before, recommends that he uses a wheelchair until he gets some strength back in the muscles that have atrophied while he was stuck in bed. Vasily tries to refuse but Marko accepts before he can object.

The motions he needs to actually move it are a different matter. Relying on his healing chest muscles so much instead of his weakened legs makes his ribcage scream with every push of his hands on the wheels. He'd rather take his chances with the possibility that he might collapse than force that for further than a few feet. Ramius takes control when he realises that, pushing the chair the rest of the way between his room and a service elevator away from other patients and visitors, followed closely by one of the guards who has been on Vasily’s door for all this time.

Vasily folds his arms over his chest and tries not to feel too helpless.

“Are you alright?” Marko asks gently, and the guard clears his throat pointedly. Vasily can almost feel him rolling his eyes before repeating himself in English.

Vasily glances over at the guard, doesn’t particularly want to answer that in front of a stranger. “I’m fine.”

One of Ramius’ hands rests on his shoulder and squeezes lightly; he knows that wasn’t an honest answer, but he presumably also knows why if he isn’t asking him again.

They exit out of a delivery entrance at the back of the building where a black car with tinted windows is waiting for them. The sun stings Vasily's eyes, although he's used to that. It can be weeks between seeing the sun on board a submarine, and this isn't much different to coming to the surface for the first time in a while. He blinks for a while until everything comes back into focus.

He stands stiffly but manages to walk as far as the car without struggling too much. Ramius shuts the door behind him as the driver folds the chair into the trunk and radios someone.

“This might be the most privacy we get before we reach our destination, so I’m going to ask you again; are you alright?”

Vasily is quiet for a moment, watching the soldier, making sure he isn’t already done with his conversation.

“I don’t want them to think I’m weak,” he says quietly, careful not to meet Marko’s eyes. “The men, I mean. I don’t want them to see me the way you have.”

“They know you aren’t weak, Vasya,” Ramius says, and the corner of Vasily’s lip twitches up at the unfamiliar informality in spite of everything. "They all know how hard you’ve been fighting, and I think a few of them have been on the wrong side of your left hook at least once."

His slight smirk turns into a real smile at that. Vasily had been a boxer as a teenager, although never a successful one, it had mostly been for the purposes of self-defence, and he was still proud enough of the strength of his punches. Slavin definitely had been on the receiving end of a left hook, and the right too if memory served. It will be a while before he can work on that kind of strength again, longer still before he will trust his body enough to be able to spar, but he supposes that’s true, at least.

Marko pauses, then continues. “Do you think I see you differently after everything that has happened?”

“I know you do.”

He crosses one leg over the other and turns in his seat until his back is facing the tinted door window and he’s giving Vasily his full attention. “And you think that’s a bad thing?”

“You’ve seen me struggle, been there by my bedside when I couldn’t even feed myself without help, your help. How could you see me in the same way as you did before? Respect me in the same way?”

“I’ve seen you fight for your life. I know that if you were a weak man, you would be dead, but instead you’re still here with me, healing faster than even the most optimistic doctor would have estimated. You’re right, my perception has changed: I respect you even more.”

Vasily can't help but glance away for a split second, but then he looks back, keeps watching Marko for cracks in his expression, but sees only sincerity.

"I should know better than to doubt you by now, I'm sorry," he says, finally, and Marko's expression turns gentle.

"After everything you've been through I think you can be excused, Vasya."

Vasily smiles again. It's been strange, calling Marko by his first name, and while he's avoided referring to him as the captain except to joke, he does still think of him by his surname most of the time, as someone to respect, not his equal. Even as friends, Vasily has always been acutely aware of the differences between them. Marko, of course, seems to have been having no such difficulties adjusting, although he's always just been 'Vasily', rarely (if ever) his surname or his rank, but becoming even more informal is easy for him. Vasily isn't going to raise a complaint; it makes him feel warm whenever Marko calls him that. 

He doesn't have a chance to reply properly before the guard gets in the car. Instead he quietly thanks him in English, and though the guard seems to think that the it’s directed towards him, Marko nods and he knows he’s been understood.

* * *

The back of the car would be big enough for him to lie down, but Vasily and Ramius still sit closer together than is strictly necessary. Vasily's knee touches Marko’s lightly every time the car goes around a corner.

He points out buildings and details of the land around them out of the windows, in English to placate the guard who now seems to be ignoring them, and Vasily's eyes shine with undisguisable wonder. The landscape isn't so different to many places back home, but the fact they're in a new country, a new  _ world _ , makes it that much more fascinating. It's that sincere, almost naive hope that he'd seen back in his quarters of the  _ Red October _ as they spoke about their futures. Marko may still not have a plan for his own, but he's  _ so glad  _ that Vasily gets the opportunity to realise his, especially after so many agonising days when it wasn’t clear whether he would or not.

If Marko leans a little closer than is strictly necessary to point something out at Vasily's side of the car, well, he hasn't brought it up to complain. Marko reckons he's actually leaned back, further towards him a few times.

It is not the time to bring that up, not when they’re in front of an American guard. He wonders if they’ll get enough time alone at the safehouse they’ve been staying in to properly talk, or if Vasily will choose to avoid him now he has the choice too. That seems unlikely, but he’s tired and he’s hurting, and that would make anyone a little more introverted than usual, especially a proud man like Vasily. Marko has been wondering how much pride he’s had to swallow just to allow himself to be helped, to talk about his doubts so far. He knows, at a certain level, that it’s a lot. He wouldn’t have been much different if he was put into the same situation, although he might not have brought it up, not to Vasily. After they worked so hard for him, he wants his men to focus on themselves and their futures, not worry about him.

His doubts fade as Vasily asks questions and makes comments about the world around them, if they were staying anywhere near where the  _ Red October _ was docked or if it was somewhere else, about wanting to try a real American hamburger at the first chance he had, a handful of other observations. A lot of their journey passes silently, but Vasily had been a quiet man before he was hurt, he's being a lot more talkative than Ramius would usually have expected. He’s excited, and against his better judgement and his past reluctance, Marko finds that he is too. Natalia might not be with him, and her loss still hurts in his soul, but for the first time he starts to think he could have a future here. For the first time, he realises (or perhaps just accpets) that if she could still see him, she’d want him to live well.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic keeps getting longer, I am no longer in control, send help.

The first thing he notices about the building are the bars on all the windows. It makes sense, he supposes, but he doesn’t like this, being treated like a prisoner after everything they’ve done.

The building is a single-story whitewashed house, and aside from the bars doesn’t look all that different to most of the farmhouses they’d passed on their way here. It's isolated, the property around it empty aside from a couple of guards either side of the door and the car that must have brought them here.

The driver pulls up on a stretch of gravel in front of the house and gets out, starts talking to the two in front of the doors. Marko touches his shoulder lightly then gets out himself and walks around the car to offer him a hand up. Vasily takes a second, has to take as deep a breath as he can bear before he stands. The cold air almost makes him cough but he manages to swallow it.

The driver finally turns to where he and Marko are standing, rolls his eyes slightly behind his sunglasses and gets the wheelchair out of the trunk again. Marko glances at Vasily with a slightly cocked eyebrow, a subtly unimpressed sort of look he generally saw during meetings and debriefs. Vasily meets his gaze with his own identical look, then walks a little unsteadily towards the chair.

Ramius takes control of the wheelchair again before one of the soldiers can, pushes him towards the building. Vasily doesn’t object because, as much as he hates to admit it, Marko was right; he’s already tired and his chest is hurting in spite of the painkillers. He wouldn’t have lasted long if he’d been walking, not that he’s going to admit that. Right now he doubts he could even move the wheelchair as far as he had back at the hospital, but letting someone who is a complete stranger help him goes against everything he knows. Not for the first time in the last few weeks, he’s  _ so _ relieved to have Ramius by his side.

The other guards don't even make eye contact until Marko greets them with his usual charm and manages to get a greeting and a little small talk out of them in the way he always did, but they don't spend too much time in the afternoon cold before entering the house.

Vasily hears the door lock behind them and frowns, but doesn’t say anything. He doubts it would do any good.

The hallway they enter is wide and long with doors on either side, Vasily counts ten, presumably rooms for all of them. At the end it opens up into what Marko tells him is a shared living space, kitchen, and bathrooms. He refuses to go in there just yet. He needs to get his bearings and possibly sleep for a little while before he'll be ready to face the crew.

Marko pushes him as far as a room about halfway down the corridor. "This room will be yours while we stay here. For obvious reasons, there are no personal locks on the doors, but it will give you a little privacy," he gestures at the door opposite. "This room is mine, if you need anything but don't want to face the others."

He nods. "Thank you."

Marko opens the door to his room then turns, seems like he wants to say something else but hesitates.

Vasily straightens. "What's the problem, Marko?"

He smiles, although there's something like sadness in his eyes.

"It is not as if this place is much more than a well-stocked holding cell, but I'm glad you're here to see it," he says softly, then closes his door with a nod.

Vasily nods in return, then enters his own, manages a few feet before it hurts too much again, then he allows himself to look around.

The room is nice, bigger than his cabin or his tiny studio apartment back in Leningrad, which had never been much of a home, just somewhere to sleep between work, but everything about it feels temporary. The furniture is nondescript, the walls are white like the corridor and the outside of the building, there is no decoration anywhere. Again, he notes the bars over the windows that are set high in the far wall, windows he's been specifically instructed to stay away from. It seems like the only time he's actually  _ seen _ any of America so far is from the car.

The others have seen more, of course, the coast, the river, wherever the  _ Red October _ is docked. He wishes he could have enjoyed those first hours of freedom instead of spending them fighting for his life, but he still has tonight, one last night to celebrate with his crew.

The bed is on the same side of the room as the door, not far from him. There's a box on it which, according to a note scrawled in marker on the side, contains his things from the  _ Red October _ .

He rises from the wheelchair stiffly and limps slowly to sit on the edge. It’s more comfortable than his hospital bed had been, certainly more than his bunk. He supposes that’s something, he’s probably going to be spending a fair amount of his stay here in it.

There isn’t much in the box; some clothes including a few worn shirts he wore off duty and a sweater, and some approved literature. Nothing military. Nothing all that personal either, nothing that could tell anyone anything about him, really. He can't lift his arms high enough to put on the sweater yet, so he leaves that, and the books are mostly his favourite approved ones, things he's read ten times before. He'll keep it all for now, but there's nothing of particularly great value to him.

He slowly unbuttons the shirt the Americans had given him and shrugs it off, very carefully puts on one of his own. It’s loose and baggy from the weight he’s lost, which makes it easier to put on, and the material is softer from wear than anything he’s been given. That was one of his goals when he’d been choosing what to take; his favourite, most comfortable clothing. He’d thought he’d probably be sat around doing interviews and debriefs for a while, and he hadn’t particularly wanted to do that in uniform. From what he’s heard from Marko, it seems like that would have been the right choice. It’s all plain, like most of his wardrobe was. He’s always tried to blend in when off-duty, to not be noticed any more than anyone else.

There were a few other things he’d smuggled aboard and hidden in his room, but it doesn’t look like anyone has found those, and he doesn’t know if he’ll be allowed back on the  _ Red October _ , never mind left alone long enough to fetch them.

The box is light enough that he can lift it onto the floor by the bed, but he doesn’t bother moving it any further than that just yet. Instead, he leans back in bed and stares at the ceiling. He’s had a long day already, and it’s still only early afternoon.

He closes his eyes, intending to sleep, but it doesn’t come. There have been a thousand times he’d rather have stayed awake in the last few weeks when he’d drifted off, but now he actually wants to rest, it stays just out of reach. He can't get comfortable, his chest hurts just that bit too much. He does his best to ignore it for a while but it takes him about half an hour to give up.

He sits straighter, then stands, all with as much care as he can. There's no emergency, nowhere he absolutely needs to be, so he checks his appearance in the mirror, rests his chin on his chest so he can straighten his hair without having to lift his arm too high.

He doesn't look as sharp as he did at work, but he doesn't need to. Vasily walks out into the hallway with far more confidence than he feels.

There are voices drifting from the kitchen, indistinct but he reckons he can make out Yuri and Ivan's voices, joking about something. It will be easier to face them in small groups, not all in one. Although that will probably mean he has to answer the same questions three times, he's not sure he can face all seven of them at once after so long.

He starts along the corridor but there are footsteps behind him before he gets far.

"I thought I heard you."

Anatoly claps him on the shoulder affectionately when he reaches him, and while he manages to keep himself stable enough to stay upright, Vasily does noticeably flinch in pain and reach out for the wall to steady himself.

Anatoly pretends not to notice, but squeezes his shoulder very slightly as an apology.

He hands Vasily a paper bag and grins. “I didn’t think you’d want the Americans getting hold of these.”

Vasily opens the bag. Inside are two of his sketchbooks, a couple of paintings and a small stack of samizdat pamphlets and paperbacks: mostly poetry, some recent, some from a long time ago, passed on from friends when he was just a teenager first realising he wasn’t the same as most of the people around him. They were all things he couldn't quite bear to leave behind, but also all very illegal and definitely not suitable for a naval officer to be taking on a journey with him. He’d hidden them in a vent in his quarters, inaccessible without standing on the desk with a screwdriver. It’s the first time he’s dared to bring such things onto a submarine; if Putin or another political officer had found them he would have been in the kind of trouble that would have made the last time look easy, but that wasn’t important now. Vasily doesn’t comment on the contents, although he’s certain Anatoly will have at least flicked through them, but nods gratefully.

Anatoly continues, and no matter how much he seems to be trying to hide it, Vasily can tell that he’s nervous. “I hid my things in the same place in the cabin. We all had our reasons for leaving, Vasily.”

“From what Marko told me, some of ours weren’t so different,” he says gently.

“The Captain knows?”

“It’s hard to hide anything when you work so closely with someone. It was one of the reasons he asked us; it's a good enough reason to want to leave. It isn't just you and I, either." He stifles a sigh. “Although I doubt it will be so much easier here for us.”

Anatoly smiles, still a little nervous, but a lot more assured than he had been a moment ago. “But here we have several billion dollars worth of leverage. I doubt that Ramius  _ or _ the CIA will let anyone forget that."

He nods again. The air between them seems clearer now there are not so many secrets, and the reminder of Marko's negotiation skills brings a smile to him.

"Thank you for fetching these for me." He starts to turn to go back to his room with his things, but Anatoly speaks again before he can. 

"Vasily, I didn't ask. How are you feeling? Are you alright?"

He shrugs, smiles slightly, although that still hurts. "Not yet. I think I will be."


	10. Chapter 10

Vasily does manage to speak to the others in smaller groups and individually. To his surprise, they all seem quite pleased to see him; on the ship he'd been the hardass, the one who made sure all of Marko's orders were followed, no matter what, and that meant that while he was well respected, he wasn't particularly well liked. He thought that would have intensified after the way he'd acted when they were leaving, stress and their complaints only making his temper with the other officers that much worse. They could all easily hold a grudge, and he is very relieved that they don't seem to, not to his face. He doesn't have the energy to argue.

One thing he has noticed, though, is that they all seem to think it bothers him, how long he was unconscious, but it doesn't, not really. He's sad to have missed his first month in America but nothing more. After all, what were five weeks on top of the forty-two years before it? Forty-three; his birthday had come and gone while he was unconscious. At least those five weeks had passed without a certain kind of dull, ever-present fear he hadn’t been able to shake for more than a few hours at a time since he was a teenager. It was the reason he learned to fight, the reason he’d spent most of his life on board a submarine; he was far from the only unmarried officer, simply because they spent so much time away from home. There was always the risk that they’d find out who he was,  _ what  _ he was, and that he’d get interrogated and locked up. He knows it probably isn’t much easier for homosexuals in America, but Anatoly was right, here he has leverage, billions of dollars of technology that the American government won’t forget in a hurry. He’s never let himself get truly invested in a relationship in case scrutiny meant it had to end. His paranoia had been what had ended some of them, the long periods at sea seeing to the rest.

Here, away from everything he’d ever known, perhaps he can let himself love someone without always looking over his shoulder. Perhaps he can be himself, whoever that might turn out to be.

He spends the rest of the afternoon in his room alone, the conversations finally hitting him enough to let him sleep for a while, even in the unfamiliar place, even through the pain.

It’s dark when he wakes up, although that’s no real indication of the time; it’s early February now, most of the day is dark. He checks his watch; eight thirty. It’s probably about time for him to show his face.

He walks as far as the communal area again. He stops for a moment to catch his breath when he reaches the door, just to be certain the others don’t know he’s so easily tired, rolls his shoulders and stretches to try and make his movements a little less stiff.

They're all already in there, the captain included, spread across a couple of sofas and some chairs. Melekhin shifts over, closer to Slavin, and pats the sofa next to him so Vasily can sit down. Marko is sat on the other, at the end furthest from Vasily, with Anatoly and Kamarov. Yuri, Pavel and Nikolai are on chairs from the kitchen.

Vasily leans back and crosses one leg over the other and the conversation resumes like it had never stopped. It’s a familiar one; Kamarov and Yuri arguing about hockey, but with a new twist of them both wondering if their new homes will have a team to support. He watches with a certain level of baffled amusement; he’s a lot more patient now than he has been about it in the past, knowing that they have nothing better to do here, knowing that this is going to be their last chance in a while to have this argument. It will be a while before it’s safe enough for them to meet again.

Melekhin catches Vasily’s eye and shakes his head, sick of this argument as ever, but mostly because he supports a different and, Vasily understands, far worse team than either of them. He gets his cigarettes out of his breast pocket, puts one between his lips to light it and leans back, takes a long drag.

The smoke burns Vasily’s lungs, forcing him to cough. Melekhin immediately puts out his cigarette, but he can't stop. 

“Sorry.”

Vasily shakes his head, waits until the coughing fit is done to try and answer. Holding it in would make it worse, could lead to him ending up with a chest infection, which is the last thing he needs on top of everything else, but all the same, each shuddering cough wracks his ribcage. It’s hard work just to stop the tears forming in the corners of his eyes. He’s breathless and his voice is hoarse when he answers, and he knows that the pain from his broken sternum enters his tone even though he tries to swallow it. “Don’t apologise. I didn’t think it would be a problem.”

Melekhin nods, albeit reluctantly, still looking guilty even though he couldn’t have known. When they’d mentioned smoking to him back at the hospital, Vasily had no idea other people would be just as bad as if he had been himself. Perhaps he should have guessed.

Slavin is staring at him, Yuri and Nikolai are pointedly avoiding eye contact. Marko has seen him at his worst and Anatoly saw him flinch earlier, but this is the first glance the others are getting of how hurt he really is. Vasily is gaunt and his movements are stiff; he looks weak and he knows it, but he’s done his best to keep any real sign of it from showing.

“I’m alright,” he insists, because he is. He’s getting better, and it might  _ hurt  _ but it’s nowhere near as bad as it had been when he woke up. He realises it’s all he can do not to look to Marko for support. He knows he’d get it in an instant, but he needs to fight his own battles now.

“Good,” Melekhin says, and now his tone is less apologetic, just straightforward, factual “That’s the only reason we’ve been staying here for so long. None of us wanted to leave without being sure you were alright.”

Vasily tries not to look too embarrassed or too flattered, but judging by the way Melekhin laughs and pats his arm, he doesn't succeed all that well.

“Not that we didn’t believe you earlier.” Slavin shrugs, flashes a hint of a smirk. “But you’ve always been a stubborn bastard.”

“What, am I supposed to be a new man now we’re in America?”

“I thought you might be a new man now your heart has stopped a couple of times,” Slavin says with a shrug.

Vasily snorts. “I’m not dead yet, Viktor.”

He lets it de-escalate back to light bickering and it seems like the rest of them are relieved by that, too. 

They all stay in there for most of the night, drinking and laughing and telling stories about the lives they left behind, stories they might have been too scared to tell in case someone else heard back there. The Americans are listening, they all know it, but that's different. Vasily joins in for as long as he can, but it doesn't take long for him to get so tired he just sits back on the sofa, smiling occasionally when one of them tells a story or a joke or Yuri does an impression of some high-ranking official or other. They talk about their destinations, about what they hope to do now they’re in America; Kamarov talks of rock concerts, of Bruce Springsteen and Iron Maiden, and Melekhin dreams of opening a garage somewhere warm with open spaces, far from the cramped cities and tiny apartments he’s spent his life in.

Marko only joins in occasionally, and never about his plans, still on the edges of the group. Most of the time he's watching them all, like he's committing them all to memory, but Vasily doesn't think he's imagining that gaze spending more time on him than the others. They don't have much time left together, just a few hours. They’ll be able to see each other again eventually, but only in a few years after everything calms down.

One by one, the others grow tired and turn in for the night until the only people left are Marko and Vasily. He's spent most of the day asleep, can't drink with his still-recovering liver and his painkillers, and he isn't going to bed until he can take the next dose. Marko has never slept much in the whole time Vasily has known him.

Ramius lays back on the sofa, props his feet up on one end and his head on the other.

“So, your plans,” Marko says thoughtfully, looking across at him, one arm folded behind his head on the sofa like when he used to lie in his bunk. “Have they changed?”

“The rabbits will have to wait,” he says, raising a hand to his healing wounds and grimacing. “I'm nowhere near well enough to work yet. And you, have you made any now?”

"Ryan has invited me to go fishing with him. His grandfather owned a cabin not far from where we docked."

“Other than that?”

When Marko replies he chooses his words very deliberately. "I don't think I ever thought we would make it this far. Even when we arrived I half expected them to use us for all our information then take us out into the woods and put bullets in our heads. The only thing that persuaded me these cowboys might have good intentions was the way they looked after you," he pauses, sits up straight to look him in the eyes. "I already lost one of the people I love, I’m not sure I could have stood to lose another. Do you understand, Vasya?"

"I think so."

Vasily is still for a long moment, and Marko doesn't speak again either. He rises slowly and limps across to Marko's sofa to sit on the edge of it next to him. He watches his captain's eyes narrow in concern at his careful, limited movements. Marko straightens, swings his legs back to the floor so Vasily can lean back.

"There's a place for you with me," Vasily says, carefully in case he somehow misunderstood.

"In Arizona, or Montana?"

"Wherever I go."

Marko raises his brows and his face creases in the start of a smile. "Won't it be a little crowded with your wives there too?"

Vasily rolls his eyes: the reason he never married back home is hardly going to change just because they're in America now. "I don't think that will be a problem."

His smile turns into a full grin. Vasily can't help but return it, and reaches for his hand, albeit a little sheepishly. Marko ignores the hand and pulls him close with an arm thrown around his shoulders, kisses him on the temple. He feels heat rising in his cheeks and ears, and Marko laughs softly.

“You’re embarrassed.”

Vasily turns stiffly to face him, and they’re still so close he can feel Marko’s warm breath on his lips.

“Definitely not,” he breathes, and leans in the last inch to kiss him properly.

Marko's hands find their way to the back of his neck and his shoulder, supporting him. When Marko slowly deepens the kiss, he feels himself melt into him. Their legs twist with each other as they get closer, locking them together. It's all so much that he almost forgets to breathe until Marko pulls away again, only a little, also breathless, but nowhere near as bad he is.

Marko's eyes are shining. The phrase _'one of the people I love'_ echoes through Vasily's mind, and now it has sunk in he's unable to shake it.

He rests his forehead against Marko's, closes his eyes again to appreciate the warmth of the hand on his neck. He doesn't ever want to move away again.


End file.
